New Camera
As most of you know, I am an equipment snob. Unfortunately, my funds do not run to the stuff I like. I usually resort to old old good stuff, but this time I bought new. It was not easy coming up with the funds, but I managed to scrape together a few hundred bucks. My choices seemed to be a very used pro DSLR, or this:
Olympus e420 with kit lens
Since I am trying to get that hobby business going (Currently hung up do to weather and my back), I decided I wanting something with a warranty that I could buy locally. The Olympus was cheap ($400) it uses Compact Flash Cards (Important to me), and I thought it would use my Olympus FL-40 flash (It will not. Olympus says it will damage the camera), and it would operate similarly to my C-5050z (Partially correct). Another factor was the availability of adapters to us my Pentax lenses on it; especially the 50mm as that would be equal to a 100mm portrait lens in 35mm (The 4/3 lenses are 1/2 the focal length of 35mm lenses).
So is this going to be a digital replacement for my MX’en? Well it is actually slightly smaller.
Olympus e420 wit 14~42 Kit lens on left, Pentax MX with M100/2.8 on right
How do you like my dramatic photo? All photos with the e420 in them were taken with the C-5050z.
The C-5050z remains my carry around camera and will be backup to the e420. Since I showed the e420 and the camera ir replaces, I will show the C-5050Z and the camera it replaced.
C-5050 on left, Canonet GIII EE1.7 on right
In fact the C-5050z feels a lot more upscale in the hands than the e420, but it does not react as quickly as the e420. Right now I am far more comfortable with the C-5050z, but then I have had it for three years, and have only had the e420 for three days.
The e420 is Olympus’s bottom line DSLR, it does not even have image stablilization like the e520, but it is also the smallest and lightest DSLR on the market. I believe it has been replaced by the e450 which by all reports only has a couple of “software features” added, and is not really available yet anyway It has a 10mp 4:3 image. The kit lens is supposed to be the best of the kit lens on ony of the entry level DSLR’s. Since I will be using it mostly on the tripod, the lack of IS is not a hardship
I really do not love auto features. I took a photo out of the window this morning and the camera gave me a perfectly focused image… Of the screen. It selects focus points that I do not want it to focus on. So far the exposures have all been withing the raw of adjustment in Adobe Camera Raw.
I have not used it outside much, this photo from yesterday morning shows why.
Snow Day
Yep, taken with the e420; I did compensate for the snow, but then could not see the mountains in the background, so used the uncompensated photo. We have been having a lot of this kind of weather here in Boone this winter. I pulled my back shoveling the stuff a couple weeks ago, and it has not settled down yet.
Cheap Exercise Machine
It has been cold and wet here in Boone this winter. As a result I have not been getting enough exercise, not even the minimal amount that I get from just getting out and about. So I was trying to figure out what to do about it. Cold wet snow on the Greenway Trail where I usually walk. The local Boone Mall is tiny, at least it is enclosed, but it is a three mile drive each way.
Then I realized I have an exercise machine right here in the apartment. A brief trial had my heart rate up to 300, far higher that is safe for someone my age. So what is this fabulous exercise machine?
The stairs to the upper floor of my apartment.
Ten laps at a normal pace was all it took to get my heart rate up to that high figure. Which proves I am way out of shape. That is 15 steps up and 15 steps back down. When you think of it it is the same as climbing ten stories and walking back down, enough to get anyone’s heart beating kind of fast.
Which goes to show you do not necessarily need money to accomplish your purpose, whatever that may be.
Nothing much going on
We did have a couple of nice days. The break in the winter was appreciated. I managed to get out on the greenway trail along the New River for a walk Monday, but got tied up in things yesterday including a trip to the doctors office.
We are now looking to see if part of my physical problems are not an over reactive immune system. I knew about immune deficiencies, auto-immune problems where your bodies defences attack your own body, but I had never even thought of the immune system just over reacting. What that means is your your body treating a minor cold like it was the flu, for instance. Anyway my doctor sent me in for a bunch of blood tests, and depending on the results may send me out of town to an immunologist.
Other than that there is nothing much going on the combination of being broke and bad weather makes a walk in the tiny town shopping mall, or reading a book about as exciting as life gets for the time being.
I can’t imagine that anyone out there is interested in this kind of crap, so why do I bother writing it?
Global Warming?
This so far is the coldest, snowiest, iciest winter since I moved here to Boone North Carolina USA.
The other night it got down to 3F, and the wind chill was -11F. I do not know where all this cold is coming from, it seems to be warmer up along the Canadian boarder. It is about 18F out there right now. When I checked the forecast earilier this morning it was supposed to get warm (35F) tomorrow and drop right down again. However, I just checked and it is not predicting mid-40’s later in the week. It is real confusing. At least the sun is out today.
I had to send the radio slave back to China. It died between one shot and the next. Lasted a whole two days. The unit was a Yongnuo RF-602, they have been getting pretty good reviews. It would not work with my studio strobe. A belated email to Yongnuo got the response they were not compatable. But if it would it will give me the ability to use the Olympus FL-40 flash off camera in the field it would be worth having. What I was trying when it died was using the FL-40 to fire the Norman P-808M optically, as it syncs with the old Wein photocell slave OK.
I printed this self-portrait on 11×14 just to see how that worked.
Chairman of the Bored
The print came out a bit dark, I will have to so something about that in future prints.
Wow, it’s twenty ten!
We have jumped into the new year. The end of the old one had some negatives.
Christmas morning I woke to the results of an ice storm. The power was out, the cable was out. The cel-phone could not get a lock. I was broke. There was only a couple of liters of water in the apartment (we are on a well). It was still drizzling freezing rain and I got soaked trying to open the iced up doors on the car.
So I spread some salt about the area, one of my services to management, made as sandwich and a cup of coffee (I have a propane camping stove) for breakfast and then read a bit. It was so gloomy that reading was not easy.
By early afternoon the rain had stopped and I got the car opened up. It started OK, and the roads were reasonably clear due to tons and tons of salt. Turned out the teller machine was working, so I got $20 from it, and after hitting 4 or 5 gas stations (nothing else open on Christmas Day), I finally found one with gallons of water. So, home and no more worries about water (I had bought an extra gallon in case the lady down the row needed it, she said she didn’t), I went back to my reading. The light was better and I read until it was getting dark, then made another sandwich and had another cup of instant coffee. I went to bed about 7pm as it was getting cold in the apartment (electric heat). The power came on about 11pm. However, I just got internet today (9th day), so I have been going stir crazy.
However things are starting to work better. As I mentioned, I once again am connected to the world. I drove down to Hickory (50 miles) yesterday to look for a pair of high top shoes. All I could find were: 1. expensive, or 2. uncomfortable, or 3. ugly. I finally bought the cheapest things I could find that were reasonably comfortable although they looked like clodhoppers. On the way back I stopped at the Walmart where I had bought the tires back in March, I think, as there has been slow leaks in two of them (about 5#/mo). The tire guy fixed them for free. He said that the wheel bead grooves were corroded and he had to sand them smooth, but the tires were now holding pressure. That is a worry off my mind.
My New Years resolution, made a bit early, was to have faith that things would usually work out OK. It was tested a bit over the past week but, I am hanging in there.
Before the holidays I volunteered to shoot portraits down at the local Senior Center for free. That went well. I had 14 sittings, and they seemed pleased with the results. I am low on funds as you know, so what I gave them was a CD with 5-6 images on it and permission to have prints made. Most of them when to Walmart, that keep my costs low. Total time was about 12 hours of work.
I figured that most older folks never had portraits done and thus their families usually never had photos of them late in life. My idea was to help remedy that without it costing them too much money. I had a coupe of more sittings scheduled for the next week but woke up ill that morning, I told the Director of the SC to tell them I would give them a rain check on the sittings, so will have to arrange to do them soon.
Well, I am close to 600 words, so I guess I will post this and go read a bit before bed.
Light Banding with my Continuous Ink Supply System
The inexpensive CISS on my Epson 1400 worked perfectly all spring, summer, and early fall, then I noticed light magenta and cyan banding in gray areas on my photos. Thinking I had clogged print heads, I did a nozzle check. The Nozzle check was fine. Plain paper color prints, were fine, but still I had that banding. Ran a few cleaning cycles, but that seemed to make it worse. I read web comments about similar problems others had with their CISS. No one had a solution. I started cussing the thing, like other’s I concluded that CISS were useless junk.
Then I noticed that three was ink in the air filters on the supply tanks. I removed them, took them apart, cleaned them, put them back together and reinstalled them. After I did a couple of cleaning cycles and the problem was gone. Apparently, what was happening was with the filters clogged there was not enough air flow. It seems that that caused a partial vacuum in the tanks that actually was pulling ink back from the ink cartridges. It was OK if all I was printing was a nozzle check or a draft document, but when I tried printing photos, it restricted the flow of ink to the heads.
I ordered some new filters from a guy on eBay, but before they arrived, the problem was back. The filters were clogged with ink again. Why, I wondered?
I went through the process again, only this time I lost a filter disk and the top of one of the filters down the drain. Well, I had new ones coming, and I could see that the disks were so blocked up, even after cleaning that they would restrict the air flow, so I left the filter disks out.
How was the ink getting up into the filters? I have used about half of the ink in the system the top of the ink level was half way down the tank from the filters. Then I realized that with the heat on the air in my apartment was really dry. Could it be simple evaporation? Was the ink evaporating and clogging the filters with pigment? I think so.
I did some thinking and came up with this solution:
New Ink Caps on my CISS
Those red caps are #8 Screw Protectors from the local building supply store. They fit nicely on the step at the base of the air inlet of the filters. It helped that the new filters arrived today as well. The caps ought to prevent evaporation of the ink when the printer is not in use. Of course, I will have to remember to remove them when I want to print something.
At the same time I ordered the filters (I ordered two sets so if I have to clean them again, I can just swap them out and keep printing while I did so), I ordered one of those waste ink bags from the guy in England that sells them on eBay. As soon as I get it installed, I will do several cleaning cycles. I hope this will be the last of that banding problem.
The Gods demand a Sacrifice
As you know I am trying to get setup to do more photography than I have b een doing in the past. I now have the capability of doing professional looking portraits. And, in that, things are moving a bit, I am schedule to do portraits at the local Senior Center next week. However, the car gods demanded a sacrifice last month and this month computer gods want their share. What that means is I had to spend money on the car last month, and the computer this monet (one o the hard drives went belly up.
The drive is still under warranty so I sent it into Western Digital for replacement. But, one of the connectors broke off the drive cage and I had to order a new cage, actually bought two from ebay. Because the dead drive was in a raid-5 array the computer is still working but a bit more slowly. I also need to get at least one more 500gb drive as the current 3 drive array is getting somewhat full, adding another drive will give me 1.5tb of storage v. the current 1tb.
Unfortunately, the money I am spending on the computer was earmarked to go toward buying a used DSLR, most likely a Nikon D1X although what I would like is a Kodak SLR/n. Well, maybe the new year will bring me another windfall. I need a camera with low shutter lag, that uses Compact Flash cards. Too bad Pentax never made a camera like that because I already have Pentax lenses.
CISS Printing Woes
OK, been ill, first a cold, then an ear infection. So, I have not been using the Epson Photo 1400 printer which is not a good thing with the bulk ink system (CISS). Very strangely, to me, I am only having problems with photo quality prints. Nozzle check and draft quality are OK, but photos have horizontal lines in them.
I kind of think the cyan nozzle is partially blocked. I learned a long time ago that rather than running a lot of cleaning cycles it is better to run one, then wait two theree hours for the ink to soften and run another, as that seems to work better and it certainly saves a lot of ink. That has helped byt not completely cleared the problem.
So, I thought that maybe the air filters on the ink reservoirs may be partially clogged. A google search found a lot of irrelevant stuff. An eBay search found a guy in England selling the filters. I oredered a couple of sets from him. I also ordered a waste ink bag kit from another guy in England while I was at it. Why is not one selling this stuff in the USA? I also cleaned the existing filters as well as I could. I wonder how ink got into them in the first place?
I did not have these kinds of problems to start with, and I wonder if maybe some of the solvent in the ink has not evaporated leaving the ink thicker than it should be. I have used about 1/2 the ink in the system in the 6 months I have had it. Maybe that usage is not high enough and I should have gone with refillable cartridges. However, before you say I should have used Epson ink cartridges, I have already saved about $500 on ink, so even if I have to throw out the Epson 1400 and buy another, it is still cheaper than using Epson ink.
Nothing World Shattering
Nothing world shattering to report. Got another cold that has sapped my energy. Had to spend money on the car. So, everything is pretty much at a standstill.
I did get some 3/4″ c 5/8″ nylon bushing stock and made adapters so the Norman Lamp Heads fit the 5/8″ spigots on the stands better. That was after finding that the Norman ones cost $8.95 + $9.00shh each. In case your math skill are weak that come to almost $72 for four of them. I made the first one like the Norman ones with a hole in it for the set screw, then realize the nylon was flexible enough that they did not need a hole as they just dented in enough to hold them tight.
I finally got some 11×14 Epson Photo paper. Have not printed anything on it yet. But at least I can now make prints bigger than I could on the R200 so it kind of justifies the 1400.
I also bought a rear kickstand for the Dunelt. One of those that I will install that and fixe the chaincase so it will not move, “real soon now”.
It has been raining again. It has rained about 2/3 the time for the past six weeks. It is beginning to get old.
I bought a new cardigan sweater today. My old sweaters are showing their age to the point where I do not want to wear them in public. The interesting thing is that I had to pay 25 bucks on sale for a synthetic one. The last one was about ten bucks for wool. The only store I found stocking wool sweaters was TJ Max and they were about $40. It is getting harder and harder to find decent clothing in Boone.
Well, now that I have reminded myself that I actually occasionally do something, I guess I will quit rambling and go take a couple of aspirin.
Light
I am not an artsy photographer, but I noticed this play of light on the wall of my apartment the other day, and had to try and capture the emotions it evoked. The first photo is as shot:
In some ways I like it as it sets the environment, but I saw a more abstract image there:
Still it was not isolating the abstract image I had seen in my mind:
Here I converted to B&W with a green filter effect, and adjusted the curves to give a more film like image:
I like how the light from the blinds curve and flow into one another and repeat. I would like to hear comments on the images. As I do not think I am particularly good at this kind of image, I will not get upset if you are hard on it. Links to your own similar images are welcome (I will have to watch the spam filters as they are hell on links in comments).